


The Perks of dirty Laundry

by Niitza



Category: Glee
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niitza/pseuds/Niitza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. In which it all starts with a shirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Perks of dirty Laundry

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from [my LJ](http://niitza.livejournal.com/12814.html).

 

Blaine should've known something like this would happen.  
  
He should've known three days earlier, when he'd brought one of the two work outfits he owned and alternated regularly to the dry cleaner. The place had looked like a walk-in closet suffering from indigestion after the last sales had just thrown up its whole very fashionable content onto the counter. "Put it there," one of the harried employees painstakingly sorting through the heap had said, gesturing towards a slightly less crowded corner of the surface and hastily scribbling him a note. Blaine had complied, thrown a heartfelt encouragement at everyone and left.  
  
He should've known the evening before, when a series of unfortunate events had formed a wild chain beginning with a bored dog that had decided to demonstrate the exact reason why pets were usually banned from restaurants and ending with a couple of wine glasses that had tripped, wobbled and spilled all over Blaine's jacket and shirt. He'd been happily standing in front of the choir, singing the two solo lines he'd painstakingly reaped through hard vocal work and long-timed perseverance. The wine had been white, not red - small mercies - but the damage had been done.  
  
He should've known that very morning, when he'd been able to pick up his second, cleaned tuxedo without any hitch, swapping it for the wine-drenched one that he'd let soak in water all night. At the time, he'd mostly been preoccupied by the upsetting of his outfit alternation schedule and by a deep reflexion about how to reorganize it with as little extra-cost as possible - because no matter how generous it was, the salary the Royal Gala Hotel granted him for each night he stepped in at the last minute to replace a missing member of its entertainment choir was no steady income and Blaine still nothing but a student in New York, always careful to spare what money he could. When he'd left the shop, it had felt for a second like he would come out of this all unscathed, like he'd successfully keep up the pretense that it took far more than that to make Blaine Anderson stumble.  
  
And that's when he definitely should've known, because that had clearly been one of these 'too good to be true' things and Blaine Anderson's life did not work like that, as it had stubbornly proven time and again.  
  
But he hadn't.  
  
Which was how he found himself in the changing room for the entertainment choir in which he'd scored an intermittent place thanks to Thad's older sister as well as his talent, barely half an hour before their performance was due to begin, frozen in front of the narrow mirror adorning the inside of his locker door with his fingers poised to do up the first button.  
  
Because this? Was not his shirt.  
  
He could've noticed it earlier, he supposed. But when he'd picked up his outfit everything had been packed on the same hanger, in the same plastic wrapping, and after identifying his suit with a cursory glance he'd assumed everything was in order. He'd had no reason to think otherwise. He might've started thinking there was something not quite right when he'd taken the shirt off the hanger, when he'd felt its fabric under his fingers, thicker and smoother than anything he could afford. But at the time he'd been in a little bit of a hurry.  
  
He still was, but now that the piece of clothing was on his shoulders, it was plain and obvious that it was the wrong one.  
  
The shirt was at least one, maybe even two sizes too large, a fact that was accentuated by its custom-made cut meant to bring out and straighten a build that was clearly broader than Blaine's at the shoulders. Yet beyond that the design as a whole was unusual. The cuffs were longer and stiffer than on a standard model, each with three slits in close formation instead of one. Above them the sleeves puffed out just enough for them to billow even in the slightest breeze. In contrast the buttons and their holes were tightly sewn onto a double hem more intricately folded than a sail, fastened with stitchings as complex as rigging, while the collar spread itself like the long and sharp wings of a gull at sea.  
  
"What's going on, Anderson?" a voice said, drawing Blaine out of his fascinated, if dismayed, contemplation. He turned his head to see Mr. Hallow, their choir leader, standing in the doorway to the changing room. "Usually you're completely dressed and bouncing off the walls by now." Blaine blinked at him, at a loss for a convenient answer. The man's eyebrows tightened in slight puzzlement. "Well, hurry up! Warm up in five," he said as he rapped his knuckles against the doorjamb. Then he pointed in a gesture eerily reminiscent of Blaine's older brother Cooper. "Oh, and that shirt's at least two sizes too big, if you hadn't noticed. You better change that."  
  
And there went Blaine's hopes of somehow getting away with wearing it. He felt a cold trickle he could only identify as unmitigated horror run down his spine.  
  
"Blaine?"

  
*

  
Blaine clearly remembered the first meeting he'd attended at college when he'd arrived to New York, fresh from high school and dizzy with the thought that he'd finally managed to leave Ohio. He remembered the large conference room with its countless seats, its wooden panels, its broad board table, its lights. He remembered the long rows arching around the teachers finding their seats below, the careful aloofness of the upperclassmen recruited to answer the newcomers' questions, the soft rumble and rustle of the students entering the room, milling around and settling down. He remembered the elated feeling spreading through his chest, filling it up to bursting, choking his breath in his throat and splitting his lips into a broad smile.  
  
But most of all he remembered the abrupt turn the situation had taken once the first meeting had been over and they'd been split into divisions. Suddenly they weren't being welcomed with smiles and praises; they were being told in no uncertain terms that this wasn't high school anymore, that the time when good grades fell into their laps was over, that they would have to work for it, that being at NYU's School of the Arts was more than something to do during the day, it was a way of life. Which had led to them being interrogated about their extracurricular activities.  
  
Fortunately Blaine hadn't been among the ones who'd been directly asked and had to answer in front of everyone. But in-between a former tennis amateur valiantly trying not to burst into tears after having been verbally torn to shreds for risking his wrists at every turn and a girl stammering that she did yoga on the weekends, Blaine had privately and silently kissed his boxing gloves goodbye - and thanked his lucky bow tie that he hadn't been questioned because he now knew how horribly it would've gone.  
  
But the thing was, there had been a reason why he'd started boxing in the first place; and even though being out of Ohio had taken him away from many sources of frustration and anger, New York's hyperactive rhythm, frequent complications and daily anxieties had sparked a whole new kind of irritation he'd needed to let out somehow. On the reduced list of 'if not approved, at least tolerated' sports, swimming (prohibited for singers) had been ruled out because his hair didn't go well with chlorinated water _at all_ , yoga hadn't seemed to be enough to expend his energy and any form of fitness had made him queasy because of the looks most of the people frequenting these places kept throwing his way. So he'd taken up running.  
  
Which had more than one perk, he'd found out. For instance, it rapidly became the only occasion he had to indulge in his favorite music genres for a sufficient stretch of time - because pop music, disco or classical rock surprisingly weren't granted much place or regard in his program. Getting to listen to all these tunes while he ran was liberating and became an incentive in and on itself: the more he ran, the more songs he could listen to.  
  
There was also the many people he got to meet - or, actually, the many dogs. They loved him, he didn't know why. Or maybe they simply liked his running speed, found it the most comfortable for them, the one they wanted to follow. It wasn't unusual for Blaine to end up with two or three - or, on one memorable occasion, six - pets in tow while their owners struggled to keep up, sprinted ahead without noticing a thing or waited patiently on a bench until he'd come full circle, like the old master of Blaine's most faithful companion (a very enthusiastic Golden Retriever). At the end of his run he exchanged a lot of amused smiles with the people he'd momentarily deprived of their Dalmatian, Fox-Terrier, Greyhound or Newfoundland, most of which he now knew by name.  
  
Maybe it was ridiculous for him to be so thrilled at being included that way into the jogger community of Central Park, for it to make him feel like a real New Yorker. He didn't care. And yes, it was a cliche if there was one, but it was a cliche of New York proportions, so it was definitely better than, say, being one of the joggers of Sharon Woods park in Westerville, Ohio - which his dad was.  
  
His father had welcomed the change in Blaine's choice of physical activity, if only because they now could pretend that they had something to talk about. Breathing techniques.  
  
Fascinating.  
  
But right now Blaine was grateful for these as he sprinted, shirt in hand, through the streets separating the Royal Gala Hotel from the dry cleaner all employees went to because they were as such granted a special discount. He could actually feel the effect of his bi-weekly runs, even more than he already did when he sung and found that he could project his voice further, hold his notes longer. In the middle of his dire situation, it was a small but real comfort to know he would reach his goal in less than two minutes, then would be able to go back and catch his breath in time for part of the warm-up and most of all the performance.  
  
He slowed down a bit when the shop came into view so as not to slam into the door upon arrival. The situation would've warranted a grand entrance, true, with Blaine bursting in and drawing everyone's attention to him, but it wasn't to happen that way. First of all because the entrance door had to be pulled, not pushed, which made rushing inside difficult. And secondly, the people in the shop were already entirely focused on another client. A very irritated client, the striking, sharp cut of his clothes underlined by his crossed arms and straight posture as he glared down at the employees - one desperately searching through the shelves, the two others cowering behind the counter - and snapped:  
  
"I can't _believe_ Isabelle recommended you. Do you have any idea how long I worked on that shirt? The time it took to find the proper fabric, the buttons, everything, to painstakingly assemble it all in the rare hours I could scrape together for myself in the midst of my extremely busy schedule? And that's without mentioning the careful outfit planning of entire _weeks_ that your utter incompetence has jeopardized-"  
  
The employees were paler than any piece of clothing they'd ever washed and Blaine, putting two and two together, cleared his throat. The next second the icy glare was directed right at him and he couldn't help but slightly hunch his shoulders and raise the shirt in front of him like a shield. Or an offering to a very, very angry god; the man certainly had the terrifying wrath _and_ the ethereal beauty to fit the role.  
  
"Would this happen to be the shirt you're talking about?" Blaine feebly asked.  
  
A second passed during which it felt like the shop itself was holding its breath, then the man answered: "Yes."  
  
His tone was still clipped but his expression softening, and by the time he'd stepped up to Blaine to gently pick the shirt from his hands his voice had caught up with it, mellowed into a melodious whisper:  
  
"Thank you."  
  
Or rather, it had when it came to Blaine, because when the man pivoted on his heels to address the employees once more his words were as sharp as before.  
  
"You can consider yourself lucky this time. But rest assured that I won't tolerate any more mistake of the kind. And were this to ever happen again there is no doubt that the office would agree with me and allow me to carry the precious, extensive content of our wardrobe elsewhere to have it cleaned. Oh, and see? Will any one of you _dare_ to maintain that this masterpiece here has anything to do and therefore could easily be confused with some nasty, cheap-"  
  
"-white shirt, standard cut, one size smaller, that I really _really_ need to be wearing right now?" Blaine cut in with a smile that was hopeful in more ways than one: not only might it help prevent the guy from rounding on him for interrupting, but maybe, just maybe his own shirt had been brought back too.  
  
The man had paused and turned again. "... Yes," he said slowly.  
  
"Great," Blaine clapped his hands. "That would be mine. Where is it?"  
  
He glanced at the employees who were carefully and judiciously not moving a muscle and not making a noise, but brought his eyes back to the man almost at once because he'd visibly frozen. "I... don't have it."  
  
Blaine blinked, a cold thread of dread lacing through his insides once more. "What?"  
  
"I'm sorry. I mean, I don't have it _here_ , I..." The man flailed the hand that wasn't holding his shirt. "I can see it clearly, I know _exactly_ where I left it, it's... on my bed. In my room. In my apartment. In Bushwick."  
  
Blaine groaned as his last hopes for a peaceful resolution crumbled into dust.  
  
"I know, I know," the guy started to babble, a far cry from the precise, cutting sentences he'd uttered not a minute before. "Rach- my roommates and I, we keep meaning to move closer to the center but everything is so expensive and we have so many memories there and-"  
  
Blaine rubbed his face with his hands, trying to breathe and to keep calm.  
  
"No, it's okay, it's not your fault," he said, impressed by how controlled his voice came out. "I'm glad I could be of help to recover your shirt and-"  
  
He was interrupted by his phone ringing. When he glanced down at it and saw who the incoming call was from he felt himself pale and his attempts not to panic flew out of the window.  
  
"Oh my God," he almost whined. "I have to go, I'll, I don't know, ask my colleagues, with a little bit of luck-" Was it him or was the ringing becoming louder and more threatening? "I have to go," he said again, turning around and rushing for the exit.  
  
" _BLAINE!_ " Mr. Hallow bellowed when he answered the call, so loudly Blaine heard one of the employees behind him gasp in renewed fright. " _Where the hell are you?_ "  
  
"I'll be here in a minute," Blaine replied, already through the door and starting to run down the street, this time without being impeded by any shirt.  
  
"Wait!" he thought he heard the man from the dry cleaner shout behind him. "Where do you-"  
  
The rest of the question was lost behind a taxi horn, a yelled curse and the roaring of motors along the streets.

  
*

  
"Please?" Blaine said, hands joined in supplication and beseechingly looking up at Marc. His colleague glanced at him then hastily looked away with an irritated groan of defeat - which wasn't quite the reaction Blaine had been aiming for when he'd tried to summon the 'puppy dog's eyes' his friends often accused him of using.  
  
"Listen, Blaine," Marc whispered, glancing around as if afraid of being overheard. "I know that you come from some sort of wealthy family and that money isn't an issue for you - and I don't hold it against you, believe me. But we're not all so lucky. Most of us can't afford more than two work outfits, do you realize that? And my second one is in the wash. I'm sorry, but I can't help you."  
  
He closed his locker with a snap but took the time to pat Blaine's shoulder as an apology and a consolation when he noticed the younger man's abated look. Then he hurried out of the room to join the warm-up that had just begun.  
  
Blaine remained alone.  
  
In the past ten minutes he'd learned two things. One, that contrary to his previous assumptions many of his colleagues were in a financial situation much similar to his even though they enjoyed the privilege of being employed as full-time members of the choir and not as last-minute substitutes. Two, that he was better than he'd thought at fooling everyone about his own budget and had them believe he never had to count his pennies to make sure he'd hold out until his next paycheck, no matter how late it might come - if it came at all. But at the same time, he'd been careful never to mention the fact that he wasn't getting any financial help from his parents beyond the payment of part of his college fees, his father having opted for using money as a bargaining chip in order to try and make his son change his major to an 'actual' field of study.  
  
Fortunately that lever was one the man had been using for years and it was therefore getting old. Blaine had learned how to get what he wanted through careful planning and cautious management back in high school, when the small amount his parents had allotted him should've been entirely spent on school supplies but had still ended up partially indulging his weakness for bow ties and pop music. Bless Dalton Academy's wise, helpful upperclassmen and the fact that no one else had wanted to be the treasurer of their student-run a cappella show choir after Wes' departure.  
  
Yet as useful as it might've been in many cases, this acquired knowledge didn't help him with his current plight. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make the unplanned cost of a new shirt fit into this month's budget in a way that wouldn't lead to him barely surviving on half a box of instant noodles per day for several weeks - and that was including the salary he'd been counting on getting tonight, a perspective that was growing more unlikely by the second because in spite of all his efforts he still hadn't anything to wear between his blazer and undershirt. Plus, there was no way the clothing stores he could think of in the vicinity were still open at this hour for a last-minute purchase, so why was he bothering with mental additions, subtractions and variables in the first place?  
  
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, pressing his sweaty forehead against the cool metal of his locker and resisting the urge to bang his head against it. After all, cerebral trauma would be the perfect excuse for him to miss this evening's performance without getting fired. He'd mostly gotten the job thanks to the recommendation of Thad's older sister, true, but they kept calling him back to fill in because of his talent and most of all because of his _reliability_. He'd never missed an appointment or been late and what was going to happen if he failed now and got that permanent blemish on his record? They would stop calling him, that's what; they would find someone better (and taller), and he would end up without income, unable to score a job at a coffee shop or a bar like most students would because he couldn't get behind anything more complex than a medium drip as a coffee order and because he couldn't work at a place where people regularly assumed he was on the menu along with the drinks. Maybe he could try a library or a bookstore? But his finals were coming up and he didn't have the _time_ to look for a job right now, he had to focus on his studies and get perfect scores and remain active on campus in order to keep the scholarship he'd miraculously obtained at the end of his freshman year. If he lost it he would have to-  
  
"There you are!" someone exclaimed, sounding relieved and slightly out of breath.  
  
Blaine raised his head towards the door and frowned in confusion when he recognized the guy from the dry cleaner. He now had a smile on his face that made him appear younger, almost Blaine's age, and a hanger held in the crook of his fingers.  
  
"Here," the guy said, stepping into the room and taking off the plastic film protecting the garment he'd brought. Which appeared to be a shirt.  
  
A white shirt.  
  
A white shirt about Blaine's size.  
  
"Try this on, I think it'll fit."  
  
Blaine stared.  
  
"Come on," the guy insisted when he saw that Blaine wasn't moving a finger to take the shirt he was now holding out to him. He barely waited another second before impatiently clicking his tongue and forcefully turning Blaine towards one of the mirrors and unfolding the fabric to help him into it. "Don't worry, you won't owe me anything, it's not like I paid for it or anything - not that I stole it!" he hastily added, eyes wide as he stepped back as soon as Blaine had both his arms in the sleeves. "I merely, you know, borrowed it from the office. For an emergency. And it's not like anyone needed it right now."  
  
The nervous fluttering of his hands stilled when Blaine did up the buttons and began to tuck the shirt into his trousers, still feeling a bit numb because what was happening right now was nothing short of a miracle. And that didn't happen, not to him. Blaine Anderson didn't get saved by unfairly beautiful fashion princes in shining brooches.  
  
"Oh, it's perfect," the prince in question said, briefly clapping his hands. Blaine couldn't help but return his smile when their eyes briefly met in the mirror - and _his_ eyes were exceedingly pretty too, even in the harsh light of the locker room. "I knew we would have the right size left over from the Women in Men's Clothes spread we did last month. It's lucky you're not built like a football player or-" His face suddenly grew worried as Blaine found his blazer and put it on. "But _please_ be careful with it, don't let anything be spilled on it, this is designer, if it gets ruined I'll be dismembered and even my boss-slash-fairy godmother won't be able to do anything to save me."  
  
"I'll do my best," Blaine vowed, finally finding his voice, although most accidents that could happen were beyond his control. His savior suddenly turned him again so that they were face to face and tugged up his shirt collar to wrap the bow tie he'd snatched from the locker around his neck. "I- thank you," Blaine stammered, feeling his cheeks burn at the proximity.  
  
A smile bloomed on the guy's face, lighting up his eyes as he glanced up from the work of his fingers and oh, wow, okay, Blaine was not prepared for _that_ in such close range.  
  
"Don't mention it," his rescuer said. "After all, you brought my own shirt back safe and sound. The least I could do is return the favor."  
  
He folded the shirt collar back down and tugged one last time on the now perfectly knotted bow tie. Then he stepped away, leaving Blaine feeling off-kilter and strangely bereft.  
  
"Well?" he said after another couple of seconds, since once again Blaine wasn't moving an inch. "Don't you have a performance to go to?"  
  
"Oh!"  
  
Blaine started, suddenly remembering his situation - which clearly didn't allow taking the time to fixate on some stranger, no matter how attractive and nice he was. He made to rush out of the room, but couldn't help but stop again in the doorway to glance back.  
  
"Thank you, really, I don't know what I would've done if-"  
  
The guy interrupted him with a sigh and marched up to him to steer him out of the room. "You'll thank me later, okay?" he said as he led Blaine down the corridor. "For now what's most important is for you to be on time."  
  
"Will you be okay getting out of here?" Blaine asked. "There is- How did you enter in the first place anyway? I mean, there's security and-"  
  
"Don't worry, I told the guard who tried to stop me that I was your boyfriend," the guy replied nonchalantly. "Worked like a charm."  
  
"Oh."  
  
They'd reached the room in which he could hear his colleagues finishing one of the last exercises in their usual pre-performance sessions. Blaine straightened his outfit one last time and took a deep breath, ready to confront his choir leader after having missed most of the warm-up. Then he realized what the guy had just said.  
  
"Wait, what?"  
  
"Break a leg," was all the answer he got, before he was shoved into the room.

  
*

  
"Sooo," Alec, Blaine's locker neighbor, said once they were back in the changing room after an evening of singing and doo-wopping. "I hear you have a boyfriend now."  
  
Blaine, who had been carefully doing up the buttons of the borrowed shirt after having put it back on its hanger, froze. Alec waited a couple of seconds for another reaction, then added, voice full of affected hurt and spite: "You tell me nothing."  
  
"Al-"  
  
"Heard he's cute too." Alec was pointedly not looking at him.  
  
"I don't-" Blaine tried again.  
  
"I'm hurt, really," Alec went on, paying him no heed. "Have I not been there for you to commiserate over your painful, lonely, life-long celibacy? The least you could've done is inform me that things were changing. Hell, you should've told me as soon as you'd 'met someone'." He accompanied the last words with exaggerated air quotes.  
  
"But-"  
  
Blaine didn't even now the guy's _name_.  
  
"Hey, Blaine!" he heard before he could set Alec straight about the situation. He glanced at the door and saw one of the waiters, Jason, poking his head into the room.  
  
"Your boyfriend, Kurt? Something came up, he had to go, he asked me to tell you to call him."  
  
He'd spoken loud enough to be heard by the whole room and had therefore caught the attention of at least a couple of other choir members, who threw Blaine an intrigued look.  
  
"... Okay," Blaine replied hesitantly, forcing a smile when Jason grinned and gave him a thumbs-up before leaving.  
  
So he had a name. But didn't have the guy's - Kurt's - number. And at least three people believed that he did.  
  
Blaine groaned. He suddenly felt very, very tired.  
  
"No complaints allowed," Alec chided. "Oh, and I'm not talking to you anymore."  
  
"Anderson!"  
  
Blaine felt his shoulders tense when he heard Mr. Hallow's voice. After having shunted him to the last row of singers as a punishment for missing warm-up, the choir leader had spent the evening throwing him nothing but judgmental and disappointed looks. As a consequence Blaine was understandably apprehensive of what the man might have to tell him now.  
  
He took a deep, fortifying breath and turned. Yet contrary to what he'd been expecting the expression on the man's face wasn't severe or stormy, but magnanimously benevolent.  
  
"So, Anderson! I've been hearing things," Mr. Hallow announced, strongly clapping the smaller man on the back. "And I have to say that given the, ah, _circumstances_ I understand that you might have been a little bit distracted - an unusual state of mind that has led to tonight's situation, which fortunately could be managed but most certainly won't ever happen again, I expect?"  
  
"Ah, um," Blaine stuttered. "Of course, sir, it won't happen again, I swear, I-"  
  
Mr. Hallow patted him on the shoulder with a patronizing smile.  
  
"Good. Then I'm willing to let it pass this one time." He quirked an eyebrow with a glint in his eyes when Blaine's only reaction was to gape incredulously. "But I have to say Blaine, mixing up your shirt with your boyfriend's? Your first sleepover must have been quite... _spectacular_."  
  
And just like that, the rush of relief Blaine had been expecting to feel came up against an upward slope of dread and was reduced to a trickle. Because here was the thing about Mr. Hallow: everyone in the choir always listened to him as soon as he opened his mouth, because it had been (painfully) proven that not doing so would inevitably have drastic consequences. As a result, everyone's ears reflexively perked up when they caught his voice and every single word the man uttered, even when it was obviously not addressed to the whole group, was heard by the room at large.  
  
Which meant that there was now no doubt that the entire choir had heard about Blaine's alleged boyfriend. A fact that was further confirmed by the exclamations that followed:  
  
"Wait, what?"  
  
"Did I hear right?"  
  
"Boyfriend?"  
  
Now another thing to know was that Blaine, being the youngest member of the choir, had automatically been dubbed its mascot as well as everyone's little brother. Most of the time it meant that they smiled at his antics and that no one really begrudged him the solo lines he took up for the people he was replacing instead of them being given to a more experienced, full-time choir member. But it also came in a combined package with nearly twenty people poking through his private life with little to no sense of boundaries, teasing him about his paltry (read: non-existent) love life and following its ups and downs with all the passion of sentimental series addicts.  
  
Blaine had once thought that he would never think back on his childhood, when he had nothing but _one_ older brother to torment him, with any kind of wistfulness. He couldn't have been more wrong.  
  
By then the piece of gossip had already begun to grow, taking its first steps only to immediately topple over into the realm of false associated ideas.  
  
"What?" someone kept asking.  
  
"No way!"  
  
"Finally!"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Oh my God, B finally ditched his V-card?!"  
  
"Our Blini is finally a man!"  
  
"Whooo!"  
  
"Take my exceptional leniency as a congratulation gift," Mr. Hallow said with a smile that didn't quite hide the wicked glow in his eyes as he obviously enjoyed the discomfited look Blaine couldn't wipe off of his face. It was clear now that the choir leader had carefully chosen his words while being perfectly aware that everyone would hear them; that this was nothing but another way for him to make Blaine repent, all the while giving the impression he was doing him a favor.  
  
"This calls for celebration, guys!" someone shouted.  
  
"Who's the lucky guy?"  
  
"Blaine, you dog," Marc said, slinging an arm around his shoulders and thus cutting off his chances of escape. "How dare you hide this from us?"  
  
It was going to be an excruciatingly long night. Blaine, who was already exhausted, hoped very hard that the ground would open under his feet and swallow him whole, sparing him a whole evening of drinks and relentless teasing.  
  
It didn't, of course.

  
*

  
Blaine looked up at the tall building in which the offices of vogue.com were housed and swallowed. He... wasn't afraid, no, not really; he was just a little bit intimidated. And hoping very hard that he wasn't mistaken.  
  
He mentally went over the facts and clues he'd compiled over the last couple of days to reassure himself. When they'd met Kurt had mentioned an Isabelle and a spread about Women in Men's Clothes - two references that any reader of _Vogue_ and follower of their website knew and could identify as one of their top editors, the infamous Isabelle Wright, and the mirror page to the Men in Women's Clothes article that had recently been published online. Blaine had read it religiously and it was all he could do not to splurge on that scarf or on that sweater (or, God forbid, on _both_ ).  
  
Having found out Kurt's work place, he'd gone on with some research, combing through the lists of collaborators and assistants on the website. And he had indeed found a Kurt Hummel mentioned several times in close proximity to Ms. Wright. As in, he was her PA. No less.  
  
Blaine would've doubted even his own investigation skills hadn't he met the man himself, who he had to admit had made such an impression that Blaine wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been working in close collaboration with Anna Wintour herself. That, and the employees of the dry cleaner had confirmed the information without daring to protest given they'd had no qualms about telling Kurt where Blaine worked.  
  
So here Blaine was, a day and a half after their first meeting, with the double purpose of handing Kurt a slip from the dry cleaner for the borrowed shirt and of maybe - if Blaine dared - asking him if he'd be tempted by an invitation to lunch. As a thank you, of course. Nothing more.  
  
Unless Kurt wished otherwise. Which Blaine hoped. A lot.  
  
He took a deep breath, tugged at the bottom of his jacket and checked once more that the note was in his pocket. Then he climbed the stairs leading up to the glass doors framed with gold-plated iron and stepped through them when they slid open.  
  
Once inside, he glanced around; there were a couple of people hastily walking across the lobby, some others talking in small groups, several security guards and a young woman behind what seemed to be the welcome desk. Blaine tried to convince himself that the impression that everyone was suddenly better dressed, model-sized and superiorly fashionable with perfect hairdo and make-up was mostly a figment of his imagination. He resisted the urge to straighten his bow tie or reset his fedora on his head and stepped up to the counter.  
  
"Hi," he told the woman when she glanced up from her screen, large blue eyes artfully lined with kohl popping out of her face. "I'm here to see Kurt Hummel. Could you call him for me, please?"  
  
She looked at him without answering for a couple of seconds, long enough for Blaine to start worrying that he'd gotten it all wrong or had just asked for something impossible. He valiantly tried not to let it show on his face, though.  
  
"May I ask who is doing the request?" she finally asked.  
  
Blaine had to make an effort not to visibly sigh in relief.  
  
"Blaine," he answered pleasantly. "Blaine Anderson." And since boarding at Dalton had taught him the art of crafty, masterful and just payback - the so-called news about the end of his celibacy had reached the other ex-Warblers through Thad's sister and no one was ever going to let Blaine live this down, or even believe his denials -, he let his sweetest smile slide onto his lips before he added: "You know. His boyfriend."

  
*

  
_End_


End file.
